Surowiecki: Hold The Applause, Please

Well, that wasn’t the most auspicious political début ever. Fifteen minutes before Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner unveiled the Obama Administration’s new plan for dealing with the ongoing financial crisis, the stock market was down a little less than one per cent. By the time he finished his speech, it was down more than three per cent, and it continued to tumble from there. Some of that drop may have been the result of “buy the rumor, sell the news” trading, but it seems safe to say that most of the selling was driven by the curious absence of detail in Geithner’s plan.